You basically can't usefully pirate Steam games (because nearly the entire value in Steam games is the fact they're in your Steam account, available anywhere, anytime, anywhen, and linked into your profile with achievements, etc. etc) - and nor can you trade them. So Steam suffers very, very, very little leakage. This is how they can sell AAA titles for £4 in a sale, and they can make a million pounds pure profit in 24 hours.

Except that many games are not tied any specially to Steam. What makes them sell is the small price for limited amount of time (and good exposure for that deal), just like it works for HIB. This has nothing with piracy, just pure business. Also AAA titles are often overpriced, or they're just not that much worth for the individual (like I would buy most AAA games for 5E only, otherwise it's not worth to me, because even when some are good enough to entertain me, it's nothing great, though I don't mind waiting few years for price to fall).

Steam games are pirated, or activated on accounts used solely for that game and then shared or exchanged.

1. The vast majority of users will be on the official server, so fine if you want to play with your 2 cheapskate friends but not if you're playing a game which maybe involves a more interesting and vibrant community. Most of the value is in the fact that the majority reside there. Just look at Facebook vs Google+

This works well, though there are exceptions for very popular games. Look at Counter Strike scene, the pirated one is so strong it's total alternative to the official one, they do 'official' leagues and clan matches within it.

This works well, though there are exceptions for very popular games. Look at Counter Strike scene, the pirated one is so strong it's total alternative to the official one, they do 'official' leagues and clan matches within it.

+starcraft 1, dota(war 3)"iccup" like example

The irony is that many ppl using it, even have the official version of the game,and all because there you can find a better opponent than on official servers (quality of service, more interesting)

Another interesting example (IHMO) is modo. When some folks from lightwave left and formed luxology their intent was to create a groundbreaking 3D package that was affordable. The first version (in my non-digital artist opinion) was freaking awesome and priced at something around 300USD (if my memory serves). Whatever the price was it was significantly cheaper that updating my version of lightwave would have cost. Sadly modo was very heavily pirated. Although there's no reasonable way to estimate the loss in income that piracy caused, it isn't unreasonable to assume that the impact was significant. Now modo will cost you about 900USD (if you convert from some other art package) or about 1200USD otherwise. The legal consumer would have very much benefited from them being able to maintain a lower price point and the increased competition that would have caused. Could that have happened if their product had been less pirated? We can't know.

Note that (IHMO) talking about reasons software companies fail when discussing piracy is at best a "red herring" and at worst disingenuous (not targeting anyone here). This isn't to imply that I disagree with what is being said, but the context in which something is said is equally important.

Out of intellectual curiosity can anyone that insists on "illegal copying" vs. "stealing" define what difference is?

This is why the definition of "theft" in law is so specific: it covers only one very, very clearly defined offence. Did you know that in the UK if someone "steals" your car, and they get caught with it, they are not actually charged with "theft" - they are charged with "taking and driving away" (and driving without insurance but that's another story). To be "theft" there has to be a clear and provable intention to deprive the owner of something permanently of it; in this case the thief would have to actually attempt to fence the vehicle, ring it, destroy it, or break it for spares, etc. I believe that most other countries use a similar distinction. Given this, it's impossible to steal something that is copied... except that the law uses the word "theft", not "stealing". Stealing is an ambiguous term which is what causes all these daft arguments over niggly semantics.

The various offences otherwise that Roquen has listed are covered under various other, different, laws.

I wish people would stop using Minecraft as an example of anything. Please get it into your heads that Minecraft is an utter, total, complete outlier. Damocles is right about why it caught on, but only scratches the surface of the tricks it used.

@Cero - what makes successful game is black magic. Some great games sell like shit and some shit games sell like hotcakes. @Damocles - again where the entitlement? Someone makes a product it's up the them to choose if you can "try for free" or not. It's a stupid move to not do so in some manner but hey that's their choice.@princec - I'm not really poking for "legal" or "moral" points, but more of language and implied permissiveness that choice of words create. If someone wants to call it "illegal coping"...whatever, but I'd be nice if everyone that makes a specific choice of terms actually thinks through why their doing so and is that choice internally consistent.

Interesting point raised back there: if prices are so low why is Android piracy so rife versus Steam?

Answer: (my hypothesis)1. Steam has no refund policy, whatsoever. If you even try a chargeback your entire account is terminated and you lose everything. No comeback.2. Android has a 24hr refund policy, which unfortunately still leaves you with the .apk which you can copy before refunding.3. Android users are, shall we say, more tight than iOS users. Piracy isn't the only reason stuff is free on Android - it's also because many many users are too tight to pay for anything in the first place, which is why they have $100 Android phones instead of $300 iPhones.

Another thought, if some company can't get enough money from selling, maybe they should've invested less into the creation? There must be then some point where it's balanced between quality vs sales/costs.

There are lot of tricks to create something great without need to use big movie-like budgets, and also to get rid of people on payroll who basically don't contribute anything (or even have negative impact) to the project?

People value their products more on Steam.Its their assets they paided much more for (than 1$ on Adroid) andassociated to their account.Psychiologically this has this "treasure chest" effect.

On Android it feels like a ranom left basket in the community kitchen.Lots of questionable free stuff. Take it or leave it.Why pay money. And when paying 1$ I see it as throw away item that I dontwant to hassle with payment too long.

Also Steam filters the entries a lot, whereas everyone can post stuff in the Android Store.

Another interesting example (IHMO) is modo. When some folks from lightwave left and formed luxology their intent was to create a groundbreaking 3D package that was affordable. The first version (in my non-digital artist opinion) was freaking awesome and priced at something around 300USD (if my memory serves). Whatever the price was it was significantly cheaper that updating my version of lightwave would have cost. Sadly modo was very heavily pirated. Although there's no reasonable way to estimate the loss in income that piracy caused, it isn't unreasonable to assume that the impact was significant. Now modo will cost you about 900USD (if you convert from some other art package) or about 1200USD otherwise. The legal consumer would have very much benefited from them being able to maintain a lower price point and the increased competition that would have caused. Could that have happened if their product had been less pirated? We can't know.

Again, is there some sort of proof (like some stats before and after the price change or something) that the users who pirated it would buy it? Or was it mostly users trying it out and not doing much real work by using it? There was good reason why Blender back then when it wasn't opensource had personal edition. And anyone doing things professionally tends to have legal copies of their tools, also the costs are typically covered within just few months.

If the price increase helped them to get funds they expected while not offending most of their customers, then it was right move. If they seek for affordable tool they can always create some lite version without some professional features or something.

Interesting point raised back there: if prices are so low why is Android piracy so rife versus Steam?

Answer: (my hypothesis)1. Steam has no refund policy, whatsoever. If you even try a chargeback your entire account is terminated and you lose everything. No comeback.2. Android has a 24hr refund policy, which unfortunately still leaves you with the .apk which you can copy before refunding.3. Android users are, shall we say, more tight than iOS users. Piracy isn't the only reason stuff is free on Android - it's also because many many users are too tight to pay for anything in the first place, which is why they have $100 Android phones instead of $300 iPhones.

Sounds like Google's fault mostly. Read that in the most recent version of Android they're adding locking the purchased app to given device by signing. I don't think that most users use rooted devices or alternative opensource builds of Android.

In this example they mention the piracy ratio was 9:1, if I remember World of Goo had similar ratio and still was big success. Maybe they should price the game for like $5 instead of rubbish $.99. Setting too low price (unless it's limited deal) make it look cheap (=bad). If someone is willing to pay they can usually afford more than $1, and even if it was priced $0.01 it would still get pirated a lot. So no point of too much lowering of price.

And anyone doing things professionally tends to have legal copies of their tools,

Absolutely! I knew a number of people way back using pirated copies of Macromedia Director which I think was selling for +£1000. Personally (and maybe cynically?), I believe that they and others deliberately made such software easy to copy, to encourage people to spend time learning it, and once they're hooked and need to use it professionally - bamn! http://www.myownlittleworld.org.uk/whimsy/dealers.htm

And anyone doing things professionally tends to have legal copies of their tools,

Absolutely! I knew a number of people way back using pirated copies of Macromedia Director which I think was selling for +£1000. Personally (and maybe cynically?), I believe that they and others deliberately made such software easy to copy, to encourage people to spend time learning it, and once they're hooked and need to use it professionally - bamn! http://www.myownlittleworld.org.uk/whimsy/dealers.htm

Yes I know there are some exceptions with even quite big companies to use pirated SW. In one case it was some specific tool they could easily afford (not cheap, it was about 10k EUR, but no brainer money for that company and being quite important tool for them), but for some reason they didn't. And more interestingly the SW authors knew about that particular company that they're using pirated copy (we've been in contact with both the offending company and the dealer for the SW as we as much smaller company bought it, the dealer told us about it), don't know how it ended, but they rather tried to encourage them to purchase it from time to time, than just suing them. Probably they don't think it would be worth it.

But in majority of other companies we met they had legal SW, especially when the company is bigger.

There are also people who are so used to warez, so they use tools like Photoshop and Illustrator for their (even within company for some non-core stuff, like creating some graphics design of their products) while they could very easily use free tools like Inkscape or GIMP, or cheap shareware. I really don't count these as lost sale, because if they couldn't use pirated version they would just use a free tool. They don't use any extra professional feature of the tools. Still they do it from some habit or something. Still using these unnecessary tools in company is just risk for nothing, but that's their problem

Mark Leung posted many many gamplay videos of his game on youtube. On each and every one, as well as on other promo articles, there were torrent links to pirate the game.The game was also reviewed on "WTF is..."

So, as far as getting your game out there and known, it can be a pretty good move and overall may very well increase sales.Especially if you increase your fanbase.

It must be interesting to be a sociologist and to observe the acrobatics people go through to reinforce their positive self image.

Just because someone points out that piracy isn't all 100% evil, doesn't mean they're condoning piracy. What you just said could equally be applied to the contortions you're going through trying to interpret the 'shades of grey' arguments as all black! =)

The silly thing with this approach is that I think we're fairly close in view (except for how words should be used!) I think people who can afford to pay for games should do so. I mind piracy less when it's people who couldn't pay, or the software is exorbitant priced (think Photoshop). Note - I personally choose The Gimp, because I'd rather use legal, free tools.

@kaffiene: I think it should be clear I wouldn't use the word 'evil'. And what exact "shades of grey" into black am I doing?

By calling it "illegal coping" you're basically saying: "Weeeellll it's, ya know, technically wrong (wink wink, nudge nudge)". So you are in effect implicitly condoning because people hear that they want to hear.

I'm, on the other hand, saying: "Hey, steal shit if you want to, but do you really have to be such a little sissy about it? Oh yeah, and don't be a totally loser and tell me you're really doing me a favor in the process. Or here's a better idea, be like most pirates and just keep your mouth shut."

@kaffiene: I think it should be clear I wouldn't use the word 'evil'. And what exact "shades of grey" into black am I doing?

By calling it "illegal coping" you're basically saying: "Weeeellll it's, ya know, technically wrong (wink wink, nudge nudge)". So you are in effect implicitly condoning because people hear that they want to hear.

I'm, on the other hand, saying: "Hey, steal shit if you want to, but do you really have to be such a little sissy about it? Oh yeah, and don't be a totally loser and tell me you're really doing me a favor in the process. Or here's a better idea, be like most pirates and just keep your mouth shut."

That's offensive. If you're going to deliberately not listen to what I'm saying and just make up your own interpretation of what I'm saying - knock yourself out. I'm done with this.

java-gaming.org is not responsible for the content posted by its members, including references to external websites,
and other references that may or may not have a relation with our primarily
gaming and game production oriented community.
inquiries and complaints can be sent via email to the info‑account of the
company managing the website of java‑gaming.org